


rococo

by uwontfeelathing



Category: Anne of Green Gables (TV 1985) & Related Fandoms, Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angry Kissing, Anne is the New Kid in Town, Band Fic, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gilbert John Blythe is a Ridiculous Drama Queen, Inner Dialogue, Modern!Anne, Modern!Gilbert, Rivalry, Soulmates, and we love him for it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24987268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uwontfeelathing/pseuds/uwontfeelathing
Summary: Gilbert is just trying to survive his junior year of college at Redmond University when the new girl, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, comes crashing into his life (literally).Just when he has given up ever being in her good graces, she suddenly shows up to audition as lead singer for his fledgling rock band.Wait... Is this his shot?! Does this mean Fate will *finally* cut him some slack? I mean, if she has to see him every day - work with him, create with him, share a mic stand - she won't be able to hate him forever...Right?
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe & Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	rococo

Gilbert shook the snow out of his hair as he entered the small lecture hall a few minutes before his first class of the new semester was scheduled to begin. Many of the seats for Contemporary Arranging and Composition were already full -- ‘Typical Music Nerd bullshit,’ Gilbert mentally scoffed to himself as he very purposefully snagged the last seat in the back row - something that he had shown up early in order to do, the absolute hypocrite. His seat was the one closest to the door at the back of the small, desk-cluttered room, and he internally thanked his lucky stars that he wouldn’t be stuck up front as he dropped his backpack on the floor next to him and leaned back in his seat, stretching his long, jeans-clad legs in front of him under the desk. Having already taken two classes from Dr. Josephine Barry, both as a freshman and a sophomore at Redmond University, he knew what an intimidating task-master she could be -- sitting up front only meant a better view to her particular brand of academic torture. He was much safer here, close to the exit. 

Beginning his junior year of college at Redmond gave Gilbert a sense of security, a feeling that he had figured out every trick and short-cut necessary to ease his way into a performing arts degree. Not that I am particularly thrilled with the prospect of graduating, as I have absolutely no idea what to fucking do with a music degree from the most prestigious program in the country, he thought wryly to himself. I swear, if one more Boomer had asked me ‘just what I intend to do once I graduate’ this summer, I think I would have been forced to scream and scream and scream until I dropped dead. Gilbert huffed a breath out of his nose, a quiet approximation of the annoyed laugh he imagined doing in the face of one particularly nosy neighbor, old Mrs. Lynde. 

My goodness, but you’re a drama queen, Blythe, Gilbert chastised himself in a voice that sounded a lot like his older brother’s, and he chewed on the eraser of his pencil as he tried to keep from smirking at his desk. He gave a mute Hey, Bruh nod to a few students that called out his name or said hello as they passed, too absorbed in his own musings to strike up a conversation with anyone in particular.

The truth of his situation was less exciting than picturing giving his next-door neighbor a heart attack with his histrionics, Gilbert reminded himself. The real story was that Gilbert had entered Redmond U with stars in his eyes and dreams of becoming a famous film score writer, filling the shoes of James Horner now that he has been taken from us, God rest his soul. But two years of exhaustive studies with classmates who seemed to have an infinite number of family connections to the industry and who always magically knew when and where and how and what to submit to contests and festivals and showcases had left Gilbert feeling a day late and many millions of dollars short in comparison to his cohort, and all he had to show for his dream was a middling GPA and a band that was barely able to clinch the 2am slot at the campus dive bar. Oh, and don’t forget that you guys are, once again, short a lead-singer, his brain reminded him unhelpfully. 

Gilbert was just able to keep himself from groaning aloud at the thought of the vacancy in his group - ‘Just one more way that you aren’t cutting it here,’ he told himself darkly. 

“Comparison is the thief of joy,” his sister-in-law, Mary, had told him the night before he had returned to school. “Just make your music, Gilbert, and be happy. The rest will figure itself out.” The fingertips of Gilbert’s right hand brushed softly at his cheekbone as he recalled her cupping his face as she lovingly doled out advice, her eyes soft with concern and coercion. 

Damn it, Blythe. Homesick already? Dr. Barry had just entered the classroom, set down her messenger bag, and begun pulling out her laptop as Gilbert smiled at the air in front of him, shaking his head infinitesimally as Bash’s taunting tone once again entered his internal dialogue. 

Gilbert scratched roughly at his cheek, then leaned back to stretch his arms out, hoping he was passing off his movements casually in case anyone was watching. Mary had pinched his cheek, hard, when she was finished with her sentimental speech, and then kissed it soundly and sent him to pack his belongings, which had been scattered about his room (and the rest of her usually immaculate house) for the entirety of his summer in Avonlea. He was so grateful for his family - to have any family at all, really, having been orphaned as a young adult. But as he had returned to the music building this morning, overhearing snippets of conversations about which islands were visited and whose uncle gave out backstage passes and which festivals featured the best artists, Gilbert knew that his adopted brother, an apple farmer, his wife, and their child were not the kind of family that were able to help him get his foot into the door of the film industry. 

At the front of the room Dr. Barry checked her watch and squared her shoulders to face the class, preparing to dive into the deep end the very second her watch read 9am. Gilbert’s eyes were glazed over, watching her preparations without seeing as guilt began clawing its way up his throat at the turn his thoughts had taken. He never wanted to be ungrateful, not when he knew what it was to be all alone in the world; not when things could be so, so much worse. At this thought, Gilbert chomped down on the end of his pencil in remembered anguish, severing the eraser in half and causing the tiny yellow instrument to yeet itself onto the floor. He reached out instinctively, diving forward over the side of his desk to grab it before it could hit the floor and roll out of his reach. 

What he hadn’t accounted for, however, was the fact that, at that same moment, a flustered hurricane-of-a-girl with wide blue eyes was blustering through the classroom door behind him and racing forward to find a seat, her arms cradling her backpack in front of her; long, red braids flying behind her as she went. 

Half a second later, and her braids weren’t the only things flying. 

Gilbert felt knees plow into his upper-back as he lay sprawled across the aisle. He felt the body above the knees careen forward, diving headfirst toward the ground. His head snapped up in time to watch her legs fly after her shoulders, watched as her bag went sailing out of her grip, arms thrown in front of her face before she crashed to the ground. 

In half of a second it was over, and Gilbert sat up to inspect the small, pale mass of limbs laid out in the aisle beside him. She started to press up onto her hands and knees before Gilbert could shake off the shock enough to act. He leapt from his desk to kneel next to her, placing one hand gently on the small of her back, the other reaching forward to grip her upper arm. 

“Holy shit! I’m so, so sorry! Are you okay?” Gilbert’s voice was too loud, having raised it so that he could hear it above the sudden pounding of his pulse in his ears. He had basically just clotheslined this poor girl and adrenaline flooded his system, blurring his vision around the edges. 

She didn’t turn to look at him right away, which gave him a few moments in bullet-time to assess the situation. Her bag had not been closed securely, and Gilbert could see that a few notebooks - all of them with wild, colorful images of unicorns and other glittery Lisa Frank-type-of-shit were spewed across the floor, along with a handful of gel pens, pencils, and Sharpies. He didn’t move to collect them yet, though. Instead his gaze moved back toward the girl, and this time he took in more details about the person, herself, and not simply the fact that he had sucker-punched a stranger. 

The first thing he saw was her hair - braided into two long ropes which were currently on the floor, as she struggled onto her hands and knees - which shone a fierce, coppery red. He couldn’t recall the last time he saw hair quite that color, and he was struck by an odd impulse instantly. 

‘Touch it,’ some abso-fucking-lutely nuts voice urged in his head. Gilbert’s head snapped back as he recoiled from the thought, horrified. ‘NO!’ he shouted at the voice, hoping they could both move on from the brief moment of insanity; act as though it had never happened. 

But then…

‘I bet it’s soft,’ his inner-creep continued, unabashed by the finality of Gilbert’s refusal. 

He shook his head once - the better to dislodge the desire to run one of her braids through his hands (‘I bet the light would catch it beautifully,’ his inner-psycho crooned). Before he could do anything that would be irreversibly certifiable, Gilbert forced his gaze to travel from the back of her head and follow the line of a pale, slender neck peppered with freckles (‘Cute,’ it swooned) down to her back. 

She wore a baggy shirt that she had tied up in the front, if the way that it clung to the curve in her waist was any indication. Gilbert’s gaze snagged on the inch of freckle-dusted skin exposed there along her back (‘Oooh, you know that’s soft, too,’ prodded Gilbert’s inner-pervert -- a voice he had never had such trouble with until this very moment. Gilbert mentally grit his teeth to keep from brushing his thumb across the surface of her pale waist (noticing for the first time that his hand already rested there, touching said soft skin) before his eyes traveled over the curve of her tight black jeans covered backside. 

Shaking his head again, this time violently, Gilbert began pulling on her arm to help her come back to standing, leaving his hand against the small of her back to hold her steady. 

“I’m so sorry about that, I dropped my pencil and was reaching for it, and I guess we didn’t see each other - I mean, I didn’t see you - and I--” Gilbert broke off mid-sentence as the girl with the fiery hair and pale skin turned to face him. 

Just about everything about Gilbert broke off in that moment, actually: his confidence, sense of self -- even the batshit crazy voice in his head came to a record-screeching stop like he was in some sort of bad 90’s sitcom. A roaring filled his ears, and he forgot how to breathe as he froze in place, staring. 

She had two of the largest, bluest eyes he had ever seen up close, set into a face that was all pale skin dotted with a constellation of freckles - an undiscovered universe that Gilbert suddenly longed to chart - punctuated by a small chin, a slightly upturned nose, and two soft, pink lips that were open slightly and seemed to beckon Gilbert closer, a silent Siren song. 

‘Cute,’ was the first word of English that returned to Gilbert, spoken in an emphatic sigh by his inner lecher. 

‘So, so cute,’ his own thoughts agreed unhelpfully. 

“I… I…” Gilbert’s ears began working again in time to hear himself repeating the sound stupidly, his mind completely blank, aside from helpful words and phrases like, ‘Who are you?’ and ‘Can I kiss you?’ and ‘Seriously so cute!’ 

Her cheeks began to turn pink as she stood there being stuttered at, her eyes still searching his, somehow frozen in this moment with him. Gilbert’s eyes were drawn in fascination to the way the blush spread from the apples of her cheeks, out and down and across her once-pale skin. He quickly dropped the hand resting against her back, gripping it into a fist as the urge to reach up and stroke her cheek barrelled into him. He took a small step away from her, feeling thrown by the force of his desire; the impulse to reach out and feel the blush as it leapt from point to point across the galaxy of freckles. He needed to stop stuttering - needed to finish his apology or begin an introduction or do something, anything, but stand here wanting. 

“I… I... FRECKLES!” Gilbert heard himself ejaculate into the silent stillness of the mere moment that had lasted a lifetime. 

His head jerked back, surprised at his own loud idiocy, and clamped his lips shut fiercely. Gilbert held as still as possible, his eyes going wide in shock as he replayed the last second over and over in his mind, praying to every god he had ever heard of that his ample imagination had invented the last two seconds of his existence. 

But, no. Gilbert Blythe could never be that lucky. 

He watched the beautiful girl with the ocean-blue eyes and shining red hair and the cream-colored skin that he longed to touch - to trace a line across her from freckle to freckle to freckle with his fingertips - turn from soft warmth into a molten inferno in front of him. Her blush remained, deepening into an angry hue as her eyebrows came down, thunderclouds rolling over her now-stormy eyes. She turned sharply away from him, wrenching her arm from where he still held it as she crouched to the ground and began gathering her things. 

Gilbert followed her down, falling to his hands and knees in supplication as he scrambled to collect her things. When she had secured her books into her backpack, she turned to find Gilbert holding both hands out to her, writing utensils held out to her on his open palms, his mouth slightly open as though he would apologize or beg or ‘Say literally anything, you idiot!’ But once again, his brain did not provide him with anything absolutory or useful in any way. 

The girl reached out sharply to snatch the offering out of his hands, whipping away from him so quickly that one of her braids came up to whip sharply at his cheek - a mockery of the caress he had imagined giving it mere seconds beforehand. 

“I’m so--” Gilbert tried, but his voice was choked. Before he could clear his throat and try again, she was already on her feet and striding toward the front of the class. 

“Sorry,” he croaked after her, though she gave no indication that she heard him. Gilbert sat back down heavily, just barely resisting the desire to bury his head in his arms on his desk and scream and scream and scream. 

When he looked up a moment later, his eyes were drawn to the back of her head, and he was surprised to find Dr. Barry leaned over the girl, speaking quietly to her, a small smile on the stern older woman’s lips. 

‘A smile?!’ Gilbert was shocked out of his humiliated misery momentarily as he looked on. He noted to himself that it was an actual, genuine smile, too, and not the usual leering, evil-looking, I-live-to-torture-students thing that Dr. Barry saved for passing back harshly-marked papers or sitting in on auditions. 

‘This day keeps getting worse,’ Gilbert groaned internally, feeling his stomach turn over as he replayed the look on the girl’s face - the way she had scowled and stormed away from him. ‘You are a world-class idiot, Blythe.’

A moment later, Dr. Barry stood to her full height and welcomed the class, all traces of her strangely warm smile for the girl wiped from her face. 

“Before we begin, I would like to introduce a new student to our ranks. This is Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, a transfer student from Queens Community College, where she earned her Associate of Arts degree. Miss Shirley-Cuthbert is joining us here at Redmond for her junior and senior years. I had the privilege of sitting in on her audition, and I admit that I am thrilled she chose to join our ranks. She could teach you all a thing or two, if I am not mistaken, about hard work, persistence, and grit!” 

Gilbert’s eyes had fastened on the back of the girl’s head as Dr. Barry’s clipped, antagonistic speech went on, so he noticed as her ears transition from pale to pink to fire-engine red in a matter of seconds. 

‘Anne,’ he thought wistfully, enjoying being able to place a name to the bright eyes and full lips that seemed burned into the back of his eyelids. ‘Anne, who blushes so prettily, whose eyes are mesmerising, whose lips I want to kiss, just to see if they are as soft and sweet as they look…’ 

Gilbert knew he would be lost to daydreaming if he didn’t snap himself out of it quickly, so he opened the notebook on top of his desk, determined to write down every word coming from Dr. Barry - who was now droning on about expectations and syllabi and other first-day ephemera. Gilbert reached into the bottom of his backpack for his pencil, only to find it missing. 

Then he remembered flinging it into the aisle, and the disaster that had followed. He glanced back up at the back of Anne Shirley-Cuthbert’s head, and wondered if his pencil was the one she was currently pressing between her fingers… if she would lift the eraser to press against her lips… if she would nibble at the soft, pink tip…

Gilbert sat back in his chair and only just kept himself from groaning at the direction of his thoughts, mentally redirecting himself once more to Dr. Barry’s speech. He spent the rest of the class in that same fashion - bouncing between tortured remembrances of his disastrous (if briefly glorious) interaction with his new classmate, Dr. Barry’s tedious lecture, and his borderline-debauched thoughts about the soft, stunning stranger just out of his reach.

**Author's Note:**

> oh hello there! consider this my formal apology for... whatever this is. i hope it comes together in prose like it plays out in my head (i.e. spectacularly awkward and stupid and wonderful). i love you all and appreciate you reading and comments (pwease? 🥺). let me know what you think and where you think this is heading and whether you like Modern!Gilbert as much as i like all of you! xoxoxo
> 
> Find me on [Twitter ](https://twitter.com/uwontfeelathing) or [Tumblr ](https://tumblr.com/uwontfeelathing) to say hey or ask questions or yell at me about stuff.


End file.
